Roper St. Francis Healthcare opened its new Mount Pleasant Hospital on Monday, bringing a full-service hospital to the fast-growing communities east of the Cooper River.

The hospital opened with inpatient and outpatient services under one roof, ABC News 4 reported. It has 50 beds open and will add 35 more in the next few weeks, the station reported, bringing it to the 85 inpatient beds the health system planned.

“We are excited to bring the level of care east of the Cooper River,” Mount Pleasant Hospital CEO John Sullivan told ABC News 4.

Patients were already coming through the doors on opening day.

“We’ve seen surgery cases today. We’ve seen several people through the emergency department. And we already have some patients admitted so we are excited,” said Chief Nurse Diana Topjian.

What’s inside

The hospital was designed to offer 24-hour emergency care, women’s services including labor and delivery suites, inpatient and outpatient surgery, intensive and critical care units, imaging, a laboratory and a pharmacy, according to plans the health system announced when it broke ground in 2008.

The new hospital has newly designed intensive care and birthing suites and a restaurant-style cafeteria, ABC News 4 reported. It also has 4,500 square feet of office space for part-time practitioners.

“We’ve tried to group our outpatient services to try and reduce having to go to different hospitals for various services,” Sullivan said.

The three-story brick hospital was designed around a patient-focused “mall” layout, with several entry points to specific service areas and surface parking, The Catholic Miscellany reported when construction began. Plans also called for a three-story, $21 million medical office building on the campus for private practice doctors, scheduled to open in fall 2009, a year before the hospital.

275 jobs

The hospital created 275 jobs, ABC News 4 reported. Some hires came from outside the Roper St. Francis system and some from inside, Sullivan said.

“Some come from outside the Roper St. Francis system and some from inside, but those coming from inside were back-filled for the most part at other Roper facilities,” he said. “So, there is a beneficial impact.”

Years in the making

The opening came nearly five years after planning and building began, ABC News 4 reported.

When the state Department of Health and Environmental Control approved Roper’s request to build the hospital, it stipulated that construction not begin until March 2008, citing the need to phase in more health care services for the East Cooper community, The Catholic Miscellany reported at the time.

“We’re thrilled to be able to move forward with plans for a new 85-bed hospital to better serve the healthcare needs of this vibrant and growing community,” David L. Dunlap, president and CEO of Roper St. Francis, said when the approval was announced.

Roper broke ground in May 2008 on a wooded 78-acre site near Wando High School, at the entrance to the planned Carolina Park development, The Post and Courier reported. The newspaper put the hospital’s cost at $143 million. The full campus, including the medical office building, was budgeted at $164 million, the Miscellany reported. Only half of the property was to be developed, with the rest left green.

DHEC said the hospital could not open until November 2010, The Post and Courier reported in 2008. The timetable was meant to give East Cooper Regional Medical Center a head start on a planned 140-bed hospital to replace its facility near Highway 17 and Interstate 526, the newspaper reported.

“This is a historic occasion,” Dunlap said at the 2008 groundbreaking, according to the Miscellany. “It’s not that often we get the opportunity to build a new hospital.”

The builders

FreemanWhite was the project architect and LS3P designed the medical office building, the Miscellany reported. Program Management Resources managed the program, and BE&K was the construction manager.

The health system

Roper St. Francis described itself in 2008 as the Lowcountry’s only private, not-for-profit hospital and health care system. At the time it had 644 beds in 20 facilities and services across four counties, and its member hospitals included Roper Hospital, Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital and Roper Rehabilitation Hospital, the Miscellany reported.

With more than 3,800 employees, the system was Charleston’s largest nongovernmental, private employer, according to the 2008 report.

“Roper St. Francis Mount Pleasant will serve for generations to come in the same time-honored tradition as its sister hospitals, Roper and Bon Secours St. Francis,” Dunlap said at the groundbreaking.

Sullivan, who joined the system in 2008 to lead the new hospital, said at the groundbreaking that the project would let Roper St. Francis “conveniently address and meet the health care needs of the East Cooper community,” The Post and Courier reported.